Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @05:21AM
from the deposit-seven-cents-to-continue-reading dept.

An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has publicly backed usage-based pricing for wired internet access at the cable industry's annual NCTA Show. He makes the claim that it would drive network efficiency. Currently most internet service providers charge a flat fee and price their packages based on the speed of the service, while wireless providers are reaping record profits by charging based on usage, similar to the way utilities charge for electricity. By switching to this model, the cable companies can increase their profitibility while at the same time blocking consumers from cutting the cord and getting their TV services online."

That's the way it used to be thru some providers, and the reason for off-line e-mail readers like Eudora. Download everything in a minute, and spend the next half hour reading and replying to your e-mail, then upload in batch, only being connected to the net for brief periods like 1 minute at a time. Maybe we can get back to ten cents a minute - maybe the kids would no longer be so fat, when they were forced by economics to go out and play basketball and baseball for entertainment rather than being glued

... but I get this feeling that under the current administration America is actually going backwards on a lot of things

Ever from the start of the so-called "Information Hiway" the users had fought hard to get the flat-rate package from ISP

It has been that way for decades and suddenly officials from the Obama administration supporting the metering of Net usage

It is also under Obama administration that the MAFIAA tried (and fortunately failed) to push their SOPA bill - and if my memory served me right, the Obama administration was supporting the bill, and only after stern objection from millions of Net users that the Obama administration changed their mind

I am afraid to think what will happen i4 years from now if this administration is to win the upcoming election

So Mr Romney is going to do better? you want to see a HUGE sell out, look at him and is multiple stances on every issue depending on who is paying the most

Seriously, blaming this on one administration, one congress, or one party is utterly ignorant. Fact is, the rich have far to much control and mr rich guy himself taking the mantel of presidency will lead our country back to double down bush era, less taxes and more power for the rich; more hardship for everyone else.

And if you think the recording industry will have less control with a republican in the white house...well then i will take back my statement that your ignorant, instead ill just call you plain stupid.

Lets just be clear, i cannot imagine the American people will accept romney as a president, i think he will lose and lose big. If the right wing was serious about anything, they would put up electable candidates...huntsman was a good choice, but retards herd the stupid in that party, in turn, the right wing has gone from a political party to a cult.

I cannot imagine the American people will accept romney as a president

Don't be so sure. Bush was elected to a second term. Ignorance was a valid claim for the first, but no one can say "gee, I didn't know" about his second term. Never underestimate the stupidity of large groups of people acting together.

I'm a Canadian, but spent some of my high school career in the States so I picked up a bit of how the US election system works. Unfortunately I think a lot of Americans don't fully understand their own democratic system. My understanding of Bush's second term was he wasn't even close to having the popular vote, but got in because of the electoral college vote him in. The college is suppose to vote the way the population tells it, but it doesn't have to, and there have been several presidents that were elect

This is slightly off the mark, and worth an OT reply, I think. (I am motivated in part by also having a Canadian background; I am now a naturalized US citizen.)

The electoral college is made up of "electors", with one elector being in the college for each congressman and senator, plus three additional electors for the District of Columbia (represent!). The electors are nominally free to vote for any eligible presidential candidate, but in practice vote for the candidate who wins a majority of the votes in their state, and have done so in every modern election.

The reason a president can win the electoral college without winning the popular vote is that the electors in the electoral college are not apportioned according to population. Each state gets two senators, irrespective of population, and various states' congressional districts are different sizes in practice. This means that low-population states are over-represented in the college relative to their proportion of the population, so it's possible to put together a majority of electoral college votes corresponding to a minority of US voters.

The possibility that a member of the electoral college might vote for a different candidate than the popular vote in their state has a name, it's called the "faithless elector". This does happen, but has never changed the outcome of a US election.

Electoral colleges were put into the system by design, so that one part of the country that voted heavily couldn't offset another part of the country with low turnout. The number of voters is representative of the size of the state, so each state has a fair representation no matter what the turnout. In days of yore, an electoral college voter would sometimes vote against his or her candidate, but that is pretty much unheard of these days - in fact, many states have laws that require that the electoral colle

Close . It is entirely possible to be elected in the US without getting the popular vote without there being any unfaithful electors [wikipedia.org] in the electoral college. In most states whoever gets the highest percentage of votes receives all of the state's electoral college votes. So discounting the various 3rd party candidates (most never get above 1%) if the D or R candidate gets 50%+1 votes they get all of the electors for a state. It is quite easy to win the popular vote but loose in the electoral college if the

You actually just called out major flaw in the US election system. We no longer vote for the best candidate, and they no longer run on the 'I am best platform.' We now vote for the least bad option. When Bush came up for a second term, his competition was Kerry - who may actually be a Cylon.

So, we voted for the one who was the least bad - Bush.

Look at campaign adverts now. Sure, they run clean ads for the first few months of the election year, but mostly the ads are, "Look at the fire demon I'm running against. He eats babies and punched orphans. I do not." We are forced to look at the bad of (a) vs the bad of (b), instead of what (a) and (b) really stand for.

Again, I believe that Bush was re-elected simply because we are no longer voting for a candidate, but against another.

Want proof? Look at the comments in this or any/. thread about Obama or Romney. No one really has good things to say about either one. Most comments made are that Obama is awful because _____, or Romney is awful because ______. At this point, the vote against Candidate A attitude is so deeply entrenched that we have more of a popularity contest than an actual fucking presidential election.

For some reason I feel like I did a terrible job of explaining my rant. I hope that all makes sense and doesn't come across as too 'screw the gub'ment'.

>>>Sure, they run clean ads for the first few months of the election year, but mostly the ads are, "Look at the fire demon I'm running against. He eats babies and punched orphans. I do not." We are forced to look at the bad of (a) vs the bad of (b), instead of what (a) and (b) really stand for.

Funny you mention that.John Adams ran a similar ad against Thomas Jefferson in 1800. He said if Jefferson were elected, "your daughters would be subject to his fiery desires and become whores in the streets". Vice-versa Jefferson's ad said Adams was a sickly man of ill repute and beady eyes.The idea that U.S. elections used to be clean are a falsehood. They have always been dirty.

"So Mr Romney is going to do better? you want to see a HUGE sell out, look at him and is multiple stances on every issue depending on who is paying the most"

One could say when they have multiple stances on every issue, it is because he understands the complexity of the issues, and realizes it. I spent a little time listening to his "Waffling" he isn't waffling his views are consistent to the complexity of the issue.

You can be both morally against abortion and still believe to support the existing law to ke

Liberal Republicans? Are you fucking kidding? The Republican Party has gone screaming waaaaaay to the right over the last couple decades. The moderates are being purged every election cycle. How many Goldwater Republicans are there these days?

The Republican Party had moved far to the left on spending until about 2 years ago. Bush was the biggest-spending Republican in my lifetime. At it's core, that's why the Tea Party started (first in reaction to the corporate bailouts, growing to oppose healthcare spending as well). Yes, there's a purge going on, driven by the Tea Party, of big-spending Republicans, but it's pretty minor as purges go (just a few primaries) thus far. But that's all economic right vs left, and we damn well need one side or the other to be the "spend less" party or we're all doomed.

On social issues, of course the Republicans have been drifting slowly to the left: as always happens, those radical ideas of one generation that worked become the commonplace ideas of the next generation (those that didn't work are forgotten), so as any party ages it tends to drift to the left. Say what you want about Bush, but he purged the remaining racist embarassments from high-profile GOP positions during his first 100 days.

flat rate pricing didn't come because USERS FOUGHT, corps do not give a rats left testicle- however you think people fought?

Compuserve got it's ass handed to it by the likes of aol, mindspring and earthlink because of competition.

when everyone could choose which POP to call the market created it's own efficiency- and found a way to work in a fashion that benefited the consumer, ultimately the pricing war became flat rate service.

the key to efficiency is choice of provider, followed by fiscal evolution.The responsibility of the government, representing the people, is to ensure we have the choices.

not to write exclusive contracts with sole presence providers.not to prop up entities with massive right of ways that don't get offered to others-- and to occasionally DENY a request to merge.

Anyone notice verizon is very in bed with comcast on a lot of deals? the fact that verizon stopped expanding fios- think it might be tied to the fact that verizon now sells comcast products? Cripes-- verizon had the poles to take on comcast territories without huge legal shenanigans- and instead they got into bed with the big fat fuck that is so efficient with it's operations (and fair with it's pricing) that it bought whole sports teams and NBC?

WHY the hell does a gov't granted monopoly service provider get to set it's rates so painfully & obviously above it's cost of operation that it can expand so far and fast. they should never have had enough money for those deals. as a gov granted monopoly they should be so bent over the 'justify the expense' audits that when you walk into the local business office customers should need their own pen to fill out a form-- cause they can't afford a box of them.

I fear every administration- unless you can vote with your dollars- you can't change anything

A flat rate package is essentially impossible. OTOH, billing by minutes connected is something that will only work in a monopoly environment. Billing by megabytes downloaded is reasonable in concept, but I have my doubts that it would be fairly implemented.

FWIW, *because* I don't trust the regulators to make things better, I'm opposed to any suggested change. It's not that I don't think that change is needed, it's that I don't trust the monopolies and their "regulators".

One group set up free, donation-driven, volunteer-run libraries so that people could learn more about different things. The other had signs reading "GET THE GOVERMINT OUTTA MY MEDICAIRE!!!!!!" and "TEACHERS ARE BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN!!!!!!"

That about sums up the difference between those two groups.

To be honest, though, I knew the Tea Party was a fucking joke when they started on the birther nonsense, long before OWS even existed. You can ask Teabaggers today and still hear a bunch of retarded bullshit about how Obama wasn't born here, not to mention all the whispered "He's a Muslim!!!" as if that would even have a fucking bearing on the conversation.

The reason that countries in Europe have declared Internet access to be a human right is because of the disparity in pretty much every walk of life between people who have access to the Internet, and people who don't. It has become a major deciding factor in school performance, which itself is a major deciding factor in future success in life. And of course, because people who are living on minimum wage can't really afford a $100/mo layout for Internet access, let alone the cost of the computer itself, it becomes a deciding factor for their children, too. $7.25/hr times 37.5h/week = a little under $1100/mo before taxes, and from that you need to pay rent, food, and utilities, not to mention stuff like clothes and incidentals... $100/mo for Internet is a very significant part of their budget.

Internet pricing and access absolutely needs to become a major public policy issue. It's nothing for most of the people reading this, but I'd lay odds that most of the people reading this are not trying to make ends meet on minimum wage. It's an entirely different kettle of fish when $100/mo means you don't eat for a week versus when it means you make one fewer trip to a restaurant each month and are still saving for retirement.

The post office business is booming. They might not be delivering many letters, but they're delivering many, many more expensive parcels. If they go bust, it'll be due to their own internal inefficiencies, not because the market vanished.

Wall Street can't look beyond the current fiscal quarter (or year if you're lucky). Government can't look beyond the next election. There's no incentive to look at long term issues like employment, education, or health care.

The USPS ran just fine for decades before they started fucking with it. Where else can you mail anything for less than a buck? UPS? FedEx? Nowhere. Which is exactly why they're trying to kill it off...

Once the USPS is gone, watch how much more it costs us to send things. I'm betting it'll only be a few weeks before UPS, FedEx, DHL, and all the other carriers arbitrarily raise their rates and blame it on the cost of gasoline.

It is also worth noting that UPS, FedEx, DHL and others do not go everywhere. They actually use the USPS for areas they don't consider safe enough, or too far out of the way to deliver to. So if the USPS goes, so does complete national mail service.

And is should be remembered that this national universal communication service was viewed as so important by the Founding Fathers that is one of the very few agencies written into the United States Constitution: Article I, Section 8, Clause 7, which specifically empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".

Bizarrely the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act" (in keeping with the tradition of Orwellian bill mis-naming) was passed by voice votes with not record kept of how individual legislators voted in either the House or Senate.

10 cents a minute would likely cost me... $900 a month. Not to bad, eh? Just go back to reading books and watching the tube for entertainment, and downloading e-mail once a day. Hey, this might even save the post office...

They're not talking about per-minute billing, they're talking about per-gigabyte billing. Your cell phone is connected 24/7 as well, but they bill you for the amount of data you actually send through the network, rather than the speed tier you're on. All cell phones are on essentially the same speed tier, which is "whatever the maximum your phone will support at the moment".

It's a ridiculous assumption though, because once the capacity's there, it costs about the same regardless of whether you use it or not.

The main difference in the UK is that we actually have a lot of competition in the broadband sector. In the US it is not unusual to have 2 or even just 1 viable option (your local cable company). Metered use is fine in a competitive enviroment (in fact arguably it is better because it stops low use customers subsidising heavu users) but that isn't true in a monopoly.

Unless the US government can force some competition into the market then it will only be able to keep the market 'fair' by constantly controlling company behaviour.

Except off-peak data transfers are "free". Nearly of the cost of being an ISP is infrastructure. ISPs have to size their back-haul connections to peak usage which is almost entirely determined by the average user.

Someone transfer 20Mb/s 12 hours per day but during off-peak is going to cost less than someone transferring 2Mb/s for 1 hour during peak.

The cost to the ISP isn't determined by volume, but by burst. Volume can influence the burst, but it is only loosely coupled. I could easily time and packet shape my traffic to the point where it's cheaper for the ISP to handle 10TB of data than it is 10GB of data. In other words, I could manage a heavy BitTorrent seed in such a way that it costs less than your mom updating her FB status and watching a few funny cat videos on Youtube.

You know, I honestly don't have a problem with metered billing, with three enormous caveats that I'm sure the ISPs would never in a million years agree to:

First, I want a new Telecommunications Act that opens up the lines similar to what Clinton did in the 90's with telephone. If you recall, after that passed, a plethora of 10-10-XXX long distance only carriers emerged, offering lower and lower cost per minute. We used to pay something like.25 a minute for long distance through MCI back in the day and within a few short years were down to a nickel using competitors services. This would require Forced-Access [wikipedia.org] provisions, obviously, but the person that owns the lines is entitled to compensation at a fair market rate.

Secondly, I want the ISPs to be declared utilities once and for all and fall under the purview of the local utilities boards in the areas they service. That allows the public to have input into what is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly. That way, when Comcast (for instance) decides to roll out some bullshit cap designed solely to kill Netflix and competitor VOD services, there would be hearings where they would have to explain their reasoning. Although, if the first point were to come to pass, the second would likely be unnecessary, as we would be able to go to a competitor.

Third, no more deep packet inspection, no more throttling, no more "traffic shaping", no more game playing. I pay you by the MB, what I do with those MBs is my own fucking business. Does the electric company give a shit what I'm using my power on? No, because it's none of their fucking business, and they get paid regardless. Ditto with bandwidth.

Those three things happen, I will be more than glad to pay for my usage. If not, they can take their newest fucking scheme to gouge the fuck out of us and shove it up their ass, because without those caveats, that's all this metering bullshit amounts to.

In some areas, higher than average usage is reported to authorities [postandcourier.com]. So, your power may not be packet inspected... but if you happen to be keeping persistent cloud based backups of your data and using up a TON of bandwidth... you may have your house raided in the middle of the night under suspicion of sharing data with people.

And who gets to decide what packets are priority and what are not? TCP/UDP ports? Nothing to stop people running non-standard ports to either avoid attention or gain a QOS advantage. Deep inspection? Get the f$%k out of my packets!

Sorry, but my neighbours torrents are just as important as my SSH sessions - i.e not very important at all in the grand scheme of things. If it was that big a deal to me, I would pay for a premium service with less contention.

The fact is, any network which allows some fucktard's torrent or tentacle porn to make my SSH sessions become unusable is a piece of shit network which shouldn't be in business.

Who the fuck told you your SSH sessions were more important? Do you think your neighbor gives a rat's ass what the fuck you're doing on the internet?

This is precisely why traffic shaping is complete horseshit: it's completely arbitrary. What if my job is to watch and review movies and TV shows all day long? Under your definition, I'm sure that would be much less important than your SSH crap, but I assure you, to me, it's absolutely not.

What is "important" is subjective. You're no more important than me, and how I use my internet is none of your fucking concern. We pay the same rate, we get the same service, end of fucking story.

Your argument sounds like a lets go back to the old ways. Because the old ways we didn't have all these problems.The issue is we got on the net and we were hooked.When I first got online I used metered Internet. I payed by the hour. Then when I got to college I had unlimited High Speed internet. After I got out of college I bought Unlimited High Speed Internet, why because I got use to it, and it solved more problems then it created.

The real problem is the High Speed internet providers are in a conflict of interests with their products.Consumer High speed internet is running off the infrastructure of their biggest competitors Cable and Telephone. So Cable Companies and Telephone companies are the ones offering Internet... And they are the the ones with the most to lose with larger internet adoption, with VoIP and Streaming Media.

We need to work on a method of getting Internet threw many other companies. A wider selection of wireless Internet services, Internet via power grid, cheaper and faster satellite internet, communities of shared wi-fi signals....

If cable companies take more money from their customers, with little extra investment in new technology or staffing, it means another sector of the economy loses out. Pay an extra $20 for internet access, that's 1 less dvd you're buying from a MPAA affiliated company.

If cable companies take more money from their customers, with little extra investment in new technology or staffing, it means another sector of the economy loses out. Pay an extra $20 for internet access, that's 1 less dvd you're buying from a MPAA affiliated company.

the beauty is that you'll be buying your internet from a MPAA affiliated company! SWEET!?!?!?!?!? so you'll be paying extra 20 bucks for less service which you can download less and the money goes to the same company who thinks you'll be buying their download services and dvd's more since you're getting less of them from the internet even when paying more..

I think the metered result from the wireless companys will look back as a failure. When the technology was new they could justify a metered way of doing things, the internet started in similar fashion, you remember 250 hours free from AOL? yes i know, nightmares of AOL, but you do remember that right? it was dropped eventually and the same thing is happening with wireless. Currently i pay 50.00 a month for unlimited text, data, and voice, i can even tether it to my laptop.

The problem with this model is that it's very hard to control your usage. There's no practical way to know in advance how much a particular click will cost. Of course, the providers love it for exactly that reason.

Yes and no. But regular web-browsing is nothing compared to half an hour of Youtube. Per-megabyte pricing, though, would maybe help to discourage pagebloat and Web 2.0 gimmickry. And discouraging the people who torrent petabytes just because they can would do no harm.

The problem with this model is that it's very hard to control your usage. There's no practical way to know in advance how much a particular click will cost. Of course, the providers love it for exactly that reason.

How many people do you know who understand what watching an hour of TV costs in terms of electricity usage? Sure, if it cost $3/hr they'd figure out sooner or later what was costing them so much, but it's no reason not to meter electricity.

Wide spread use of ad-blocking for one. A vast reduction in the amount of time spent on social networks and aimlessly surfing YouTube for another. Less impulsive downloads of media and apps from the likes of iTunes/app stores for a third. I can think of several others, but the gist is the same; savaging the profits of other markets to boost the flagging fortunes of another.

Let's not forget that, like certain other industries, the ISPs and carriers only have themselves to blame for getting into this mess in the first place. Be honest; connectivity costs have been unsustainably low for at least a decade now. Being overly competetive with each other and sacrificing upgrades necessary for future growth in order to cut another few bucks off the monthly fee has ultimately helped remove most of the smaller players. What's left is looking more like a cartel in all but name every day, and you know what happens with cartels and pricing, right?

...connectivity costs have been unsustainably low for at least a decade now.

Not at all. Take a look at the price of long distance packages or basic phone service.

The shift to IP based systems has saved the telcos and ISPs billions of dollars, which they've reaped as profits for shareholders instead of investing in infrastructure. The fact that the infrastructure has not kept up is not due to a shortage of profit, but an excess of profit. That money should have been invested in long term growth instead of being paid out.

Take a look at Saskatchewan. We have more miles of cable and wiring per capita than pretty much anywhere else in North America (we only have a little over a million people/potential customers in the whole province.) Due to a government mandate to SaskTel, the "preferred supplier" (and not a monopoly), over 98% of our population has access to high speed internet, whether via landline or wireless services.

Even for a wireless link, you can get unlimited bandwidth for about $60/month for your smart device. I pay about $45-50/month for a 6.5Mbit down/700Kbit up DSL link. There are no caps, no monitoring, and no filtering.

Yet SaskTel turned in one of their most profitable years of all time for 2010, despite the "huge" infrastructure investments they were mandated to make over the years.

The same is not the case in Ontario, for example, where a similiar link would cost me close to $100/month and come with caps. But Ontario is a "free market" province, so the providers cherry-pick the populated centers, screw the rural customers, and reap huge profits at the expense of the people's access.

Check out the results of metered access in the UK. Within 5 years, people were so paranoid about running over their limits that the market collapsed. Even those who were willing to pay for outrageously large bundles were being hit with overage charges, and people became afraid to use their internet access.

Some providers brought back "all you can eat" packages and cleaned up on the market.

The same will happen in the US.

Unless, of course, the oligopoly is strong enough to ensure that no provider runs their links without caps and overage charges. And given the lure of the almighty dollar and the gleam in shareholder's eyes south of the border, I'm pretty sure the oligopoly will hold together well enough to thoroughly screw over the consumer.

As someone else noted, propping up the ISPs and telcos means that other businesses that depend on bandwidth suffer: Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and a bazillion "me too" video and audio streaming services.

Let the telcos who didn't invest die a slow and painful death. It's the only way the market will open up to companies that put a higher priority on planning for the future. If you let the companies who nickeled and dimed on infrastructure gouge you for profit now, you're rewarding their incompetence and poor planning, and you'll only get more of the same.

It didn't arise last time. What arose last time was companies offering unlimited internet, because it was one of the rare cases where there was a large block of consumers with a similar/unified desire, and it actually had a successful push.

If they try this route again, then some companies will find that they can get more customers and generally increase their profit, by getting rid of the competition, and offering unlimited plans. The companies with pay-by use will again migrate back to offering

Now their entire world is threatened by the internet, and the FCC are attempting to apply a band-aid to help keep their business model going. This will also be to the detriment of the consumer, and ultimately progress.

Sorry, but his application of the 'band-aid' is fundamentally wrong. In business, if you fail to innovate and keep ahead, you will eventually be surpassed by someone else/another business whereby they are ahead of the curve or willing to change. This is happening, and frankly, the cable industry has no-one to blame but themselves for failing to innovate.

They didn't innovate, and now they are realising that they are fast becoming obsolete.

*Disclaimer: I've worked in Cable for years*
They have been innovating. You can only fit so many channel frequencies into a line before you have to upgrade the line your using or find a new way of transmitting over the existing infrastructure. Any innovation that would allow for an exponential addition of channels to the existing infrastructure would be a gold mine. They're trying, and they're all in it together. When was the last time you heard of any one cable company inventing anything? They don't. They have a group dedicated [cablelabs.com] to research which helps all of them.. Anything that the group comes up with is made an industry standard, basically IEEE for cable.

But going back to the infrastructure: cable companies are obviously bound to this. And it costs a lot to both maintain and upgrade. The first half of the 2000's many companies used cable internet and later cheap phone service to multiple advantages.
1 was generating more revenue by increasing the amount of services their customers subscribed too. This also lead to increased customer loyalty, since its one thing to cancel just your internet service if a company pisses you off but another all together to consider dropping a company that hosts your TV, Internet, and phone.In upgrading a system of say, 50k subscribers you could double the amount of money it generated, which means
2 the increased revenue offset the costs of upgrading systems to support the new features. Think back 10 years ago, what was the fastest speed you saw in major cities? 3-5 Mbps if that. Some area's have 50+ Mbps now.
3 by increasing the capacity when HD came around many systems where already ready for the initial wave of channels. They did innovate, which is why many area's have 50+ HD channels available now if you have an HD converter. Without the investment into rewiring many area's, cable would never be about to touch satellite as far as competition in many area's.

Upgrading systems costs an insane amount of money. That more than anything is the reason that cable monopolies exist, the cost of entry prohibits competition. To install a new plant in an town of 50k takes something to the tune of 2-3 million dollars, with zero guarantee on how long it will take to recover that cost, if ever.
Cable lines have reached their limit unless someone comes up with a new way of multiplexing, and if its that significant a step up you'll see it deployed very rapidly. Some companies are switching to fiber but the cost is insane. And where as if someone cuts a cable line the service could be back up in an hour, if someone cuts a fiber line it could take significantly longer.

Having said all that, the "Usage Allowance Plan" is a crock of shit. It is exactly what it is being labeled as, a stop gap measure to keep people from dumping the TV service. Because cable companies get charged by the broadcasters based on their install base*, which includes internet only customers in some cases, they're trying to stop the current trend of "Internet for everything" since it inverts #1 & 2: less revenue generated, but now node capacity has to be increased. Does it make it fair for the consumer? Of course not. Are the amounts for the usage plans in use by the larger companies fair? Considering that a large % of the subscribers never come close to the cap, it depends. COULD they offer an 'unlimited' package? Yes. Which is why its a crock of shit, their could be a way to pay more if you use more, but thanks to other industries showing that micro-payments for additional service is a viable model for monopolies that isn't likely to happen. Hence this whole hullabaloo, they're trying to have their cake and squeeze money out of it too.

*ask anyone who's worked for a Cable call center about NFL network. Just don't do it when they're holding something stabby.

Note that I'm coming from a place where I don't know much about how digital cable systems work, but I'm curious:

What effect would it have on the cable system to convert all available frequencies for use on an IP network, and deliver the channel that you're watching via video-over-IP, rather than having a discrete data "channel" and delivering lots of channels of video simultaneously that you're not watching?

It seems that for the cost of a bit of channel-changing delay, they could harvest a shedload of bandwidth. Unless they've already done this with digital cable systems, then I guess I'm just catching up.

The fundamental flaw here is that cable capacity is shared between *all* users from the local node, i.e. everyone in your street, unlike ADSL.

Therefore, there's not really much improvement to be made. The only possible optimisation with this hypothetical IP system would be to "detect" that everyone is watching Australian Idol (or whatever people watch these days) and then allocate more capacity to that program perhaps to improve video quality. Otherwise, if everyone is watching something different it's no d

Many cable companies already implement Switched Digital Video [wikipedia.org] where only the channels that are actually being watched are sent down the wire. This may actually explain the couple second delay that you have experienced when changing channels. This allows the cable companies to offer more channels than their system has the capacity to support.

South Korea is smaller Geographically than 39 United states and has a population of close to 50 million.
Kentucky, which is slightly larger geographically has a population less than a 10th of that.

Population dictates cost. Economically South Korea can support that. because for every mile of network they build they potentially support 10x more people than in Kentucky. The cost to bring that speed to all area's of Kentucky then would increase 10 fold. There is a reason that we don't have high speed in our

Do not worry, destroying competition will fix this for you, they'll retain customers by removing competition, it's more fun to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hinform politicians than to have to interact with pesky tech people and try to understand why giving them money might make you a better provider than the competition...Easier to legislate competition out of the picture.

Used bandwidth doesn't consume more stored resources than unused bandwidth. Idle network bandwidth is lost forever and can not be used to improve the network performance at a later time. That's why data volume isn't a good metric for the consumed good - bandwidth used at peak times is. In a functioning market, volume pricing would result in prices that don't reflect the ISPs costs and therefore in uncompetitiveness for the ISP which uses this flawed pricing model.

How would they expect to compete against those providers who do offer unlimited internet? People would just abandon them and move to those who offer unlimited internet. Isn't that how unlimited internet started in the first place?

Depends on the price. If you don't watch online video, you might well be paying less than under a flat rate.

Then what happens is the unlimited providers get left with the higher usage customers, and they then have to raise their prices. Customers at the bottom end realise they will pay less under usage-based pricing, and leave. Rinse, repeat.

Depends on the price. If you don't watch online video, you might well be paying less than under a flat rate.

Then what happens is the unlimited providers get left with the higher usage customers, and they then have to raise their prices. Customers at the bottom end realise they will pay less under usage-based pricing, and leave. Rinse, repeat.

Nah. They'll keep the current price, just limit it and charge crazy punitive overage charges. Say it's $50 a month right now for unlimited. In the future it'll be $50 for the first (insert arbitrary but low # of gb) and probably $5 for every gb after that.

You didn't truly think this was going to save the consumer any money did you?

You have a very weird system over there. In the UK, one company, BT had a monopoly on the telephone system. This was recognised and legislation was put in place that the last 'mile' of the connection could be used by any company offering services many years ago allowing me to choose from multiple ISPs as long as there was space in the junction box for the hardware. Now there is concern that BT again may be able to monopolise the next 'evolution' as we move towards fibre to house, so there are calls [guardian.co.uk] to prevent this from happening.

In the US there seems to be a focus on the government doing what is good for corporate greed and not what is good for society.:(

In the US there seems to be a focus on the government doing what is good for corporate greed and not what is good for society.:(

The problem is access. The corps always couch their arguments in "what is good for society" rationalizations and the people running the government don't get to hear from any other viewpoints because everybody else can't afford the lobbyists. Even with the "revolving door" between industry and government, most of the people who take that obviously corrupt path justify it as doing good for themselves while doing good for the public.

The best we can hope for is that corps with opposing economic interests wil

It's not easy to make good regulation, we in Norway had that too but the result was that Telenor (our version of BT) wouldn't build out junctions for DSL instead cashing in on old ISDN connections with very little competition. You don't want to make it so that BT doesn't want to convert people to fiber either. Here in Norway now I feel there's surprisingly well working competition, we have power companies, phone companies and cable companies all now looking to provide fiber services and I'd say the biggest player (Altibox) also has the best offer. In the US the problem as I understand it is that there's a lot of exclusivity arrangements so most people have one DSL and one cable service to pick from - or just the one. So they have de facto monopolies without the regulation, the worst of both worlds.

Hate to reply to an AC, but you have a great point. Too bad you didn't post under your own identity and take credit.

It's much the same here in Finland, we have a lot of bandwidth and it's cheap. I pay US $12/month for an UNLIMITED 3.5G 21Mbps connection using a mobile hotspot that supports up to 8 devices. No bandwidth caps, no limitations, zilch. I've had 24Mbps ADSL to my home for many years, unlimited. The only reason why I haven't upgraded to 100Mbps at home is my ADSL+ gateway would need to be replaced, and to be honest I have enough bandwidth for what I need anyway.

I don't want to hear the usual "but the US is too big and sparsely populated" excuse, please. That's a load of BS. Finland has a large landmass for its population size and is only 2% populated by area. The rest of the land is forests. Yet we have dozens of mobile operators and ISP's competing well with low prices, good service and coverage over the whole damn country. The US has put off building infrastructure for so long and raping customers for crappy service, that it's unlikely to be able to catch up to the rest of the world in 10 years. It's falling behind at an alarming pace, and with religious zealots and corporations now firmly in control of the population and government, you are pretty screwed.

It's equally bad that I say this as an American who left the country more than 10 years ago and has witnessed the country slowly destroying itself from afar. Truly sad.

Metering has the eternal problem that ends with a enraged customer calling customer support over the shocking bill at the end of the month. AOL used metered services for years. When they finally went flat-rate, their business exploded with more customers than they could handle. When AT&T shifted from metered and offered flat-rate data for iPhone, they got more customers than they could handle.

Metered services can be good alternatives or add-ons to a flat-rate service, but they will be filling specific needs. A serious gamer may want low-latency. A serious file sender may want high-bandwidth on-demand. (I need to get this huge file sent to the office NOW.)

Metered services also have one big sore-spot: the meter itself.
- when do you get to see the meter? Just once per month at billing time?
- who verifies the meter is accurate?
- how are ISPs prevented from abusing the meter? Recall that long ago, laws had to be written to stop phone companies from charging for calls before they were actually answered.
- how are bytes being counted? Bytes are not counted like phone minutes. Packets are re-transmitted out of necessity. Do they count twice?

- when do you get to see the meter? Just once per month at billing time?

Whenever you want. Just go to your usage page on the IPS's website and have a look.

- who verifies the meter is accurate?

You can have your own usage monitor on your computer or router if you want

- how are ISPs prevented from abusing the meter? Recall that long ago, laws had to be written to stop phone companies from charging for calls before they were actually answered.

If the ISPs can't charge the user then the only risk is of the ISP lying about usage. Have fixed monthly fee with a cap which cuts off or throttles access to the Internet beyond your ISP once the cap has been exceeded. Customer can pay to top up, ideally for slightly less than the price/GB of the basic cap. Customers ca

Old content driven, highly scripted, highly time controlled, ads you can't block or skip while live, we drive the narrative money.

VS

New internet you go where you want, sandbox type choice for the user, ads are there but can be dialed down at the user end, DIRECTLY sells stuff to people, lets people connect in multiple ways, old we drive the narrative content still there but also many many other points of view.

Mark Twain aside, if you still wanted to promote laissez-faire economics (not that that's always appropriate), the FCC should ensure that there is enough competition in a given market (far from today's sorry reality in the U.S.), publish GOOD (useful) STATISTICS on speed (indexed by time of day perhaps), latency, uptime, etc. Then let the consumers decide how they want to be billed. Or at least that's how it SHOULD work out, I don't understand how market forces haven't eliminated the insanely complex and restrictive 2-year contracts most people are locked into. Lobbyists perhaps?

If people are provided accurate information they SHOULD choose the most efficient/best product for the cheapest price (except for "Geffen goods"). That's why ratings agencies are absolutely crucial to a properly functioning market; nothing was "wrong" with sub-prime mortgages, it's just that the ratings agencies were giving them AAA ratings (because they were being paid by the issuers). Those guys should be "castrated and blinded" (another literary reference, this one from "The Visit") or at least made bankrupt and their officers thrown in prison!

"similar to the way utilities charge for electricity. By switching to this model, the cable companies can increase their profitibility"

This sounds like ignorant idiotism at its peaks. Most of you here will remember (some might still live it...) the modem days, pricing per kilobyte, browsing web pages with ads, images and everything disabled, replying to e-mails offline and sending in batch, no online video, no streaming radios, and sometimes still ridiculously high bills at the end of the month.

That's where you're headed, and they will call it progress.

You people recently seem to try to make those people's decisions increasingly easier who consider moving to the US.

Like, consider regular flat rate dsl prices. There were times when we were looking from central europa with awe towards the cheapness over the pond. Today, a 1.5mbit dsl in PST costs almost exactly what we pay for a 5mbit dsl in CET. And now they're "evolving" you back to usage-based fees. Nice.

So let me get this straight, the government is suggesting that government supported monopolies (teleco & cable) change their behavior (in a way negative for the consumer) in one monopoly area in order to help their business in a different monopoly area?

Maybe it's time that the these monopolies are broken up. There is a reasonably obvious need for local monopolies on who owns and maintains the cable infrastructure. There appears less of a need for a monopoly on content providing over that cable. Since they are obviously leveraging the monopoly status in the first to extend the second, it's time to break 'em up.

If this crap becomes widespread will the makers of graphic heavy sites be able to sniff the ISP and deliver a more textual version of the page for persons shackled to the services of such ogres. I'm pretty sure it could be done using the dns, but how reliable it would be is up in the air.

The government agency that was created to regulate communications and ensure only big corporate players can buy their way into the market, has a suggestion that would make incredible profits for the corporations it exists to serve.

See, government regulation is all about serving and protecting the public, isn't it...?

first, I don't think that the US founding fathers had anything remotely like the Internet in mind when they wrote that amendment, and second, even if they did, or even if it can be argued to apply, nobody is telling you that you can't speak on the Internet, they're just telling you that if you want access to this utility, you need to pay your share. it's not really any different than your right to speak in a public space, since you're already paying your share for that through your taxes.

I pushed for usage based charging in my university as an alternate to the previous scheme of free bandwidth except for fining the top 20 users at £2/gig. They now charge by the amount charged per gig by the UK academic network (JANET) of ~15p (23c) and I think that's perfectly reasonable.
Usage based charging is not a bad idea. In fact, it's pretty great for the majority of consumers. Why shouldn't people pay for what they use? Where it's bad is where there isn't appropriate competition to drive the

The cost of GENERATING electricity is actually pretty small. The cost of getting it to your home is significant. Furthermore, fundamental laws of physics would tell you that the cost of higher data rates is more power. Literally. So at some fundamental level, this is not a bad idea.

However we need to recognize some facts: the delivery company of this content is a monopoly. The infrastructure to deliver FiOS was paid for and is maintained exclusively by V

They don't start wars for oil for one, though they have been known to continue them. They don't talk out their ass about how awesome God is all the time and act like uneducated jackasses. Obama spoke out in favor of gay marriage, albeit years too late. they actually tried to push through universal healthcare, although buckled under pressure from repug jackasses as per usual because they have no backbone.

You know the difference between the Obama admin and Bush? Obama has good ideas that they don't have t